Bella Swan's Quileute book
Bella Swan owned a book on the Quileute tribe, it's history and legends. She bought the book in 2005 from the Thunderbird and Whale Bookstore in Port Angeles, Washington. Known contents Thousands of winters before the arrival of the White Drifting-House people (ho-kwats), the Quileute Indians and the ghosts of their ancestors lived and hunted here. For as long as the ageless memory of legend recalls, the Quileutes flourished in the territory which originally stretched from their isle-strewn Pacific beaches along the rain forest rivers to the glaciers of Mt. Olympus. Today, Quileutes need only lift their eyes to see the burial place of chiefs atop James Island, or A-Ka-Lat — translated as “Top of the Rock”. This sense of cultural continuity is their birthright and heritage. Though much has changed, Quileute elders remember “back in the days” when the “old people” dared challenge kwalla, the mighty whale, and who recounted the exploits of wily raven or bayak, who placed the sun in the sky. According to their ancient creation story, the Quileutes were changed from wolves by a wandering Transformer. By legend, their only kindred, the Chimakum Tribe, were washed away by flood and deposited near present-day Port Townsend (where they lived until Chief Seattle’s Suquamish Tribe wiped them out in the 1860s), leaving the Quileutes with no known relatives on earth. Quileutes were thus were surrounded by unrelated tribes, the Makah — Nuh-Chul-Nuth who migrated down from the west coast of Vancouver Island; S’Klallam to the northeast along the Strait of Juan de Fuca; and Quinault, south at Taholah, both descended from the Salishan. Relations with these groups allowed trade, intermarriage of nobility, and the ostentatious ceremony — the potlatch — an honoring giveaway celebration and redistribution of wealth. Occasionally, however, controversy over trespassing caused outbursts of warfare or slave raiding. Traditional Quileute life was representative of the complex cultural pattern that was common to indigenous people of the Northwest Coast region. Oriented to the ocean, they fished and hunted sea mammals, and were reputedly recognized as the best sealers on the coast. Their red cedar canoes were engineering masterworks ranging in size from two-person sport models to 58-foot ocean going freight canoes capable of hauling three tons. The graceful bow and flowing shear-lines of the hull were reportedly copied in the hull design of the American clipper ship — which became the fastest in the world for its time. In the early 1900s, a canoe similar to those used by the Quileutes was outfitted with a mast and sailed around the world. Quileute whaling canoes traveled as far north as Southeast Alaska and as far south as California. Although no early totems survive, elegantly carved house posts decorated their immense cedar “big houses” (a 600-foot potlatch house has been documented on the Olympic Peninsula). The Quileutes bred special woolly-haired dogs and spun their hair into yarn for highly prized blankets. Rain proof skirts and capes, woven from the soft inner bark of the cedar, and conical rainhats provided protection from the 115 inches of rainfall that annually drenches Quileute country. The Quileutes also wove numerous types of baskets, some so fine and watertight that they served as kettles for boiling water or stew. Clothing, weaponry, paints and dyes, and tools and utensils were all made from natural materials found near at hand, or traded from neighboring tribes. Surface copper made it way south from British Columbia over these trade routes and iron was not unknown, possibly carried by the Japanese Current from Asia to Quileute beaches in derelict junks or other ships. Quileute society generated from “house groups”, made up of all those who occupied during winter months one of the big houses at the mouths of the Quillayute or Hoh rivers, or Goodman Creek. Each house had a chief, those in line of chiefdom (nobility) and commoners. Thus kinship and blood relationships determined much of the early structure of tribal government. The house group may also have included a number of slaves, either captured or traded from neighboring tribes. During the summer months, these large units would fragment into families, some of whom moved upriver to hunting camps. Behind the scenes * The text seen in the book comes directly from the Quileute Nation homepage. References * The prop pages from the book were in auction in 2016. * The official Quileute Webpage, where it is very likely the text was copy and pasted into the prop book. Category:Books Category:Notable items Category:Twilight film